Culinary Action For Education

Who We Are

We are a powerhouse team of community members who want to create real change within our community. Small, but mighty, our core team consists of Maya Rawitch and Jessica Sanchez, with Laurel and Wayne Kessler also playing an integral role in our operation. we are fiscally sponsored by the Mount Shasta Bioregional Ecology Center, and are forever grateful for their support and guidance. We would not be where we are today without the continued support in the form of grants from the Nancy Driscoll Foundation.

Our Goal

To provide healthy food that our young people like to eat. Food that grows strong bodies, bright minds, and balanced emotions.

To bring the community together to ensure healthy meals for Mount Shasta Union School District students and to provide an understanding of and an appreciation for real food that is delicious, local, organic, and fresh.

 Culinary Action for Education (CAFE)'s  mission is to empower underserved youth with access to fresh, healthy, and sustainably sourced organic food, while nurturing an early appreciation for wholesome nutrition. Through our efforts, we strive to create lasting impact by fostering a strong connection to sustainable foods from a young age, promoting not only physical well-being, but also environmental stewardship, and community resilience.

At CAFE, we focus our efforts on providing nutrition education, access to nutrient dense, whole foods, and exposure to produce for families in Siskiyou County. Succeeding in meeting our goals around these three focus areas ensures that we are building a resilient community that provides a buffer against food insecurity and the lack of education that occurs in areas with limited resources, such as in Siskiyou County.

Nutrition Education

You know that old adage "You can give a man a fish or you can teach him how to fish"? We think that applies perfectly to the conversation around greater access to healthy foods. Providing access to nutritious foods is oonly one piece of the puzzle in creating healthy families. That's why we provide educational resources with our food bags- to help the core concepts of healthy eating to seep into the heart of the families we serve. The educational handouts included tips on selecting balanced meal options and recipes using the Native American three sisters crops- corn, squash, and beans. One of our members, Maya Rawitch, has dove straight into engaging classes at Mount Shasta Elementary School with relevant worksheets and harvest of the month style taste tests. She brings in season produce for the students to try after a short lesson tying in the produce with age appropriate activities. So far, she has visited nine classrooms, ranging from TK to 3rd grade, and has featured cherry tomatoes, apples, and pears. 

Access To Food

It is impossible to thrive without access to healthy foods, and students can't perform at their best with undernourished bellies. That's why we have such a passion for providing healthy food to families in need. We have provided snack stashes for the Mount Shasta Elementary School, Sisson School, and Mount Shasta High School. Loading up on delicious and nutritious snacks is a must for kids' growing minds and bodies. In addition, we ran a successful emergency food bags distribution program in November, right around the time that SNAP benefits were out of reach due to the government shutdown. We provided emergency relief to over thirty households, each provided with a bag full of nutrient dense non-perishable goods to supplement their food supply for the month. Items present in the bags included canned tuna, canned black beans and corn, squash, bananas, pears, and so much more.

Exposure To Produce

We participated in two lunch on the lawn events, which are put on every month in the warmer summer and fall months at the Mount Shasta Elementary school. We provided strawberries, blackberries, and blueberries during one of the events, and apples sourced from a local farm for the other event. We also count our harvest of the month activities as exposure to produce, because it is creating fun and familiar memories around produce. Exposure to produce is very important in developing children's pallets and what better way to do that then providing samples of fruit at lunch on the lawn or harvest of the month?

Donations

We are committed to supporting organizations that share our passion for building resilient food systems, whether that be through education or food access. We made a donation to the Regenerative Arts Learning Center this year to help out with the cost of their mobile greenhouse. We also provided funds to the Mount Shasta Farmer's Market to provide $5 vouchers for kids to buy produce at the market. They also distributed vouchers to other markets in the county, and participation in the markets were up because of the voucher program.